Fabricated wood floor



oct. 13, 1936. F. w. CHERRY 2,057,135 j FABRIGATED WOOD FLOOR Filed Sept. 22, 1932 2 Sheets-Shee't 1 Oct. r13, 1936. F. w. CHERRY FABRICATED WOOD FLOOR 2 Sheets-Sheet 2 Filed Sept. 22, 1932 Patented Oct. 13, 1936 PATENT OFFICE FABRICATED woon FLooa Frank W. Cherry, Kenilworth, Ill., assignor to Lug-Lox Flooring Company, a corporation of Illinois Application September 22., 1932, Serial No. 634,380

5 Claims.

The present day method of laying wooden floors, one board at a time, scraping or sanding them, and then giving them the desired surface coatings is very costly, because all of the operations are performed by hand under conditions not best adapted to keep the cost down.

The object of the present invention is to make it possible to produce a completely finished Wooden iioor, ready for use, without requiring any appreciable amount of labor in the process of laying the floor, and without requiring any labor to give to thefloor the desired surface nish after it has been laid. Y

In carrying out my invention, I assemble at a mill, factory or central plant wood floors in flnished units or sections; each unit or sectionsconsisting of ordinary tongue and groove, or other, floor boards held firmly together by metal fastenings. These units or sections can be easily handled and quickly installed upon any suitably prepared subfloor; thereby producing a complete, uniform floor by the mere simple act of assembling the several units or sections which constitute it. Consequently there is a great saving of time in the laying of the wooden iioors in a building because the steps of nailing downV the iioors, one board at a time, of scraping and sanding, and of adding surface coatings are eliminated. This saving in time in completing a building, or in laying a floor anywhere, is an advantage in addition to. that resulting in the savings eiected inthe cost of manufacturing the floor in the mill, factory or central plant over the old methods.

The oor boards of each unit or section must, of course, be held together so that the upper faces thereof will initially be flush with each other and will remain so. This I accomplish by securing the iioor boards to underlying metal strips, bars or rails. I prefer to employ bars or rails which, although shallow, will be suiciently sturdy to hold the sections flat. If the boards were secured to wooden beams, warping of the wood would make it impossible to produce a floor which would remain fiat even if it were fiat initially. 'Ihe boards are preferably fastened to the metal rails orthe like by means of clips interlocked at their lower ends with the latter and extending up into the joints between, and interlocked at their upper ends with, the boards. With this arrangement, the boards may be of the ordinary tongue and groove type, or of any other type without exposing any of the fastenings at the upper side or face of the floor.

In carrying out my invention I have produced a novel construction and arrangement which will permit the tongues of ordinary tongue and groove floor boards to seat themselves in the grooves of adjacent boards in precisely the same way as in a nailed iioor, while providing room for the holding elements of clips that draw the boards down against the rails. Therefore, viewed in one of its aspects, the present invention may be said to have for its object to modify floor boards of the tongue and groove type sov that, while the tongues and grooves function precisely as heretofore, pockets or recesses are afforded to receive and seat elements on holding clips each extending upwardly into the joint between two boards and interlocked with both.

The various features of novelty whereby my invention is characterized will hereinafter be pointed out with particularity in the claims; but, for a fullunderstanding of my invention and of its objects and advantages, reference may be had to the following detailed description taken in connection with the accompanying drawings, wherey Figures 1, 2 and 3 are horizontal sections through a room, showing the progress of laying therein a oor composed of three units or sections, Fig. 1 showing the first section in position, Fig. 2, the rst two sections, and Fig. 3, all three sections; Fig. 4 is a section, on an enlarged scale on line 4 4 of Fig. 3, showing the third and last section being brought into position beside the second section; Fig. 5 is a view similar to Fig. 4, showing the third section in its final position of adjustment; Fig. 6 is a section, on a larger scale than Figs. 4 and 5, on a plane extending transversely of the boards and longitudinally through one of the rails, only fragments of two of the boards being shown; Fig. 'l is a section through one of the floor units or sections taken on line 1-1 of Fig.l6, that board which is at the left in Fig. 6 being shown in elevation, as is the clip and,Y that board which is at the right in Fig. 6 being entirely omitted;- Fig. 8 is a perspective view of a fragment of one of the boards showing one of the seats or pockets to receive the flanges on one of the holding clips; and Fig. 9 is a perspective view of one of the holding clips.

Referring to Figs. 1 to 5 of the drawings, A represents a room having a rough or other subfloor B on which a finished wooden iloor is to be laid.v In accordance with my invention, the wooden floor is preformed or fabricated into a number of units or sections which, when laid on the iioor of the'room, edge to edge, will cover the latter. 1 The room has been shown as being just wide enoughV to accommodate three sec- 2 tions which I have indicated at C, D, and E; these sections being of various sizes and'shapes due to the shape of the room. The several units or sections may be laid directly on the subfloor B or on a cushioning pad F overlying the subfloor B.

Each floor section is made up of the necessary number of floor boards I of the tongue and groove or any other type. In the arrangement shown, the boards are of the tongue and groove type and the invention will be described and explained in connection with this particular embodiment, although not limited thereto. `The oor boards are laid crosswise of and rest yupon* suitable shallow metal strips, `bars or rails 12, preferably parallel with eachother and 'spaced apart a short distance from each other. 4In the arrangement shown, each'fof the-rails is in the form of a stiff trough or channel, the upper `marginal portions of whose side walls are turned or bentlinwardly at right angles thereto to 'form flanges 3,'3. Excisions, which may be saw cuts, are made in the edge of each board, these excisions extending inwardly through the under side of the tongue and a short distance into the body of the board. The excisions are so diS- tributed that there will be one above each rail. Therefore, as best shown'in Fig. 8, each board has above each of the lrails a flat recess 4 cut into the under face of its tongue 5 and merging at its inner end into a shallow pocket 6 extending into the body of the board.

The boards are shown as being fastened to the rails by means of clips G each composed of a stem or shank portion 1 of about the same width as the internal Width of one of the troughs or Vchannels inthe rails, and provided with notches 8, 8 in its side or end edges to receive the flanges 3, 3 of one of the rails; together with laterallyprojectingflanges 9 and I0 at the top. The metal of the flanges-9 and I0 has a thickness about equal tothe vertical height or depthof the recesses 4 and the pockets 6. The over-all width of each clip at the top of the clip, measured at right angles to the plane of the shank or stem, is somewhat less than the distance between the inner end of one of the pockets 6 and the inner end or bottom of the groove Il in the adjacent board, when the tongue in one Yboard is fully entered into the groove of the adjacent board. Furthermore, the distance between the notches 8 and the flanges in each clip is such that, when a clip is interlocked Witha rail and is then slid along the rail until its flange 9 enters the pocket 6 in a board resting on the rail, that board will be held tightly against the top of the rail. A portion of the flange 9 andthe flange IIJ will be seated in the recess 4 in the under side of the tongue, and thus there will be no interference with the entry of the tongue and the flange ID into the groove in the next board when the latter is set on the rails and moved along the same until it engages with the iirst board.

VIt is therefore evident that a. floor unit or section maybe quickly assembled and then be finished in any desired manner in the factory, mill or central plant, and then need only be laid downvbeside other units or sections on a prepared subfloor to produce a floor nished and ready for use.

y Iprefer that the rails project beyond at least one edge of each floor unit or section so as to underlie the adjacent marginal portion of the next section. I therefore prefer so to position the rails on two adjacent or consecutive floor sections in such a manner that they Will not align with each other; thus permitting the projecting ends of the rails on one section to pass underneath and adjacent section without being interfered with by the rails forming part of the latter section.

After one of the floor units or sections has been laid down, it will be seen that there is a row of `clips G, along the exposed edge in position to enter into the groove in the edge of the next unit orsection. This is best shown in Fig. 4 where the section D has been placed in its final position while Lthe section E has been laid down but is still spaced apart a short distance from Y section D. When section Eis moved toward the left in Fig. 4, the projecting tongue of section D will enter the groove Il in the advance edge of section E; so that the clips associated with this tongue Vwill be interlocked with section E just as though the last board in section D and theirst board in sectionE were adjacent boards in the same floor section. In the same way the flanges 9 on the advance edge of section E-will enter properly placed recesses and pockets in the edge of section D.

It will thus be seen that a completely finished floor may be laid in a very short time, and be immediately ready for use..V Therefore, theV cost of the work that has to be done onthejob is so small as to be of little consequence; the actual work of assembly of the individual boards and of smoothing and surface-finishing the floor being all done in the mill at a muchA lower *cost and more eiectvely than could be Adone by hand on the job. As a result, ne floors, finely iinished, may be` had at a cost much lower than heretofore and even much lower thanthat of floors of greatly inferior workmanship and finish constructed inthe old manner. Y

It may be desirable to provide means to insure that one floor section willl not pull away from another. This can conveniently be accomplished by laying on the subiloorsomestrips, bars or rails H, similar to the member 2, longnenough to extend across the width of the room and fasteningy the iioor units or sections to these additional elements. In this way the floor is tied together across its entire width and noseparation of one unit or section from .another'can take place after the floor has been laid..

. I claim: l

1. A floor board of the tongue andgroove" type having short sections Aremoved at intervalsk tongue shallow recesses extending transversely across the tongue, and there being shallow Ypockets in the edge of the body of the board in registration with said recesses. Y f

3. A iioor board of the tongue and groove type having short sections removed at intervals from the under side of the tongue to provide between the tongue and the underlying lip of a cooperating board pockets or" channels whose vertical depth is the same as the thickness of a metal in a sheet metal clip adapted to enter the grooves to hold the boards down. j j

4. A floor board of the tongue andgroove type having sections removedat intervals from the under side of the ltongue, lsaidsections being g5 much longer, measured lengthwise of the board, than either the width or thickness of the tongue.

5. A i'loor board of the tongue and groove type having sections removed at intervals from the under side of the tongue and providing pockets, the vertical depth or height of each pocket being ,only a small fraction of the vertical width or thickness of the tongue and the length of each pocket, measured lengthwise of the board, being much greater than the width or thickness of the tongue.

FRANK W. CHERRY. 

